Commentary: Reid ignoring the inevitable

Philadelphia Eagles coach Andy Reid speaks with members of the media during a news conference at the team's NFL football training facility, Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2012, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

PHILADELPHIA — The Eagles had finished their morning practice, and Andy Reid was surrounded by cameras and recorders. So he began with the injuries and ended by pretending he wasn’t sure what Eagles fans were thinking. Fourteen-plus years later, that wouldn’t change. It’s why, high among other reasons, there won’t be a 15th.

Sunday, the Birds will play their final home game. That will make it the last time Reid will be on the Linc’s home sideline. That will also make it the last chance for the fans to boo him, or cheer him, or ignore him, or heckle, serenade or stand for him and for what he has achieved.

Yet there was Reid Wednesday, with a chance to begin the farewells. As if.

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“I haven’t even gone there,” he said. “I am just concentrating on the Washington Redskins and keeping it at that.”

If he was concentrating only on the Redskins and how to improve from 4-10 to 5-10, he would not have crammed an available four-time Pro Bowl quarterback into the No. 3 hole, two spots behind a 1-and-4 rookie. But to the end, he would do one thing and expect fans to see another. He is going to insist that he has not considered that he will be coaching his last game in front of fans he had always said out loud that he appreciated and for an owner who has stuck with him so long that it has done his own professional reputation grave damage.

It’s always been that way with Reid. If the fans chant negative things about him, he says he is too immersed in his job to listen. But if the Eagles win, he is quick to credit their support. So there he was, deep into run-out-the-schedule time, acting surprised that someone would wonder about his view of his last Linc game.

“I really haven’t thought about it,” he said. “I’d like to tell you a different answer but I haven’t really gone there.”

So it will be, to the end. It’s how he’s been, obsessed only with the next game. More often than not, that has been to the Eagles’ ultimate benefit. But now? Really? Maybe there is a financial incentive for Reid to be so coy. He is signed for next season and would deserve that cash if fired. Maybe that’s why he can’t say that he is thinking about his last home game. Maybe.

Inside the locker room, where there will be plenty of changes, too, many of the players were on edge. Unless they are reading the standings from the bottom up, they know the deal: They will work just two more Sundays for Reid. Yet Reid still has such a command of the room that the subject of his employment situation — and likely Sunday sendoff — remains taboo.

“Hey, I don’t know about the sendoff or not,” Trent Cole said. “I don’t know if they say he is going or not. I don’t know what you’ve heard, but I hope he is here. But anyway at that, we are out to win. That’s what it is. We have the faith in Coach Reid that he is going to put us in a position to go out there and win. And that’s pretty much it.”

Once, there was reason for that faith. But that was too long ago to matter. The Eagles have become a turnover-prone, disorganized slapstick act, and for that, Reid soon will be working elsewhere, no matter how thick the in-house denial.

“We’re not thinking that way and Andy’s not thinking that way,” Evan Mathis said. “He’s taught us to stay focused on the task at hand. Those external circumstances are not anything that we should be worried about. It would be just a distraction to our preparation.”

So, the Eagles prepare — for the games, if not the reactions.

“Since everybody is saying he won’t be back next year,” Brandon Graham said, “I want to send him out with a W here and a W away in New York.”